Is there a way for insurers to provide more information about claims outcomes--specifically, how much insurers actually pay to close a claim, versus how much the policyholder sought? A journalism "auditor" suggested recently that the lack of such hard numbers makes it impossible to accurately judge the industry's claims-handling performance, and he may be onto something.
Dean Starkman, who edits "The Audit" for Columbia Journalism Review, got into the middle of a major brouhaha over the accuracy and fairness of a cover story in last September's Bloomberg Markets magazine, "The Insurance Hoax," which I had taken to task in my blog. (Check my July 28 blog for more details and links.)
That dispute aside, Mr. Starkman caught my attention in his July 8 online column with his complaint that while insurers can drown critics in data, "insurance lacks a useful metric for--of all things--claims-handling performance....[N]o aggregate figures exist to document the amount policyholders actually demanded from insurers, a key figure that could be compared to how much insurers chose to pay."
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